


Stay (I'll let you beat me at checkers)

by wowuhmidk



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Oblivious Sokka (Avatar), Oblivious Zuko (Avatar), Sokka (Avatar)-centric, and Zuko can't use an iron, they play checkers, they're both just dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26107987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowuhmidk/pseuds/wowuhmidk
Summary: Sometimes Sokka entertains the idea of unpacking everything himself. He’ll just stuff all of Zuko's clothes into his closet. He’ll put all of Zuko's books onto his bookcase in the living room. He’ll move all of Zuko’s toiletries into the bathroom right next to his own bottles of shampoo and body wash. He’ll move Zuko’s bed right out into the alley and just move the boy himself right into Sokka’s own bed.Maybe if they do this more often Zuko will choose to stay. Maybe Sokka should invest in more board games.
Relationships: Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 292





	Stay (I'll let you beat me at checkers)

Summer honestly has no business being as boring as it has been this week, Sokka decides.

If he had it his way, Toph would have called out sick for no reason again, and Aang, Suki, and his sister would have been back from their trip yesterday, and the six of them would all be out doing— _something_. They usually manage to find ways to pass the time somehow, and Sokka never feels bored around everyone.

But instead, he’s at home, moping on the couch like some friendless loser.

And he has plenty of friends, by the way. _Tons of friends_. He just managed to be the only one of them without a life.

Well. Maybe not the only one. “Zuko! Are you still busy?”

It’s a minute before the door to their room opens, and another four seconds before the smell of something burning reaches Sokka. He plugs his nose and tries to peek over Zuko’s shoulder as the door shuts. 

Zuko is huddled up in the doorway and looks miserable. “What did you do? It smells like chemistry gone wrong in there.”

Zuko had borrowed an iron from his uncle to get an outfit together for an interview tomorrow, and that's what Sokka assumed he'd been doing in there. Sokka had helped him experiment with the steam settings this morning on various fabrics around the house, but that did _not_ smell like steam.

“I didn’t do anything!” Zuko immediately goes on the defensive, spreading his arms out as if to block Sokka from trying to get into the room, which of course just makes Sokka get up from the couch and try to get into the room.

“You did something— _you better not have burned any of my stuff!”_

“I didn’t!” Zuko is physically pushing him away from the door, but Sokka manages to get a hold of the knob to open it. The smell hits him again.

He’s got a hand pressed against his face, but out of one of his eyes he can see the iron, now unplugged, but laying plate-down on the wooden side table by Zuko’s bed. The smell is melting plastic.

With one well-placed jump on Sokka’s part, Zuko’s set off balance, and they’re both tumbling to the floor. Sokka manages to take the opportunity of knocking the air out of a red-faced Zuko and scrambles over to the iron. When he picks it up, it’s already cool to the touch, but there’s a clear plastic stuck to the plate, with a blue logo mutilated beyond recognition by the melting.

“Did you iron a wrapper?”

Zuko is quick to his feet. “No, I did not.”

“This is a wrapper, Zuko.” If possible, his face reddens further as he snatches the iron away from Sokka.

“I did not iron the wrapper.”

“Then how did a wrapper end up stuck to the iron?”

Zuko doesn’t answer and instead sets the iron back down as if to hide the wrapper altogether.

The clean white shirt on his bed is only partially unwrinkled, although Sokka doesn’t know if he had anything else he was planning on ironing. He’d been in here a while.

“We’re not going to talk about the iron,” Zuko finally says, and Sokka shrugs in response.

“Okay, works for me.” He lays back on Zuko’s bed with a groan, stretching out. “I’m out of Netflix, though, so I'm dying of boredom. We should go out somewhere.”

“Out of…?” Zuko shakes his head. “Mai has my car tonight, so if you want a ride anywhere, you’re out of luck until tomorrow.”

Sokka groans again, this time in frustration. “But I want to do something _now_. Tomorrow isn’t now.”

“Just do something here,” Zuko says, starting to put away his interview shirt. He’ll have to go with it wrinkled tomorrow.

“All there is to do here is nap and play checkers, both equally boring.”

Zuko gives him a funny look. “We don’t have checkers.”

Sokka rolls over the bed onto his side of the room, pulling out an unopened dollar store checkers set from his desk. “I got it a couple of months ago because I thought Katara and I could play.” Which is only a little untrue. He actually grabbed it on a whim because it was the smallest checkers set he'd ever seen, but then he just never took it out of the bag it came in. But Sokka guesses he would have asked Katara to play if he didn't have anything better to do. Like now.

Zuko takes it from Sokka and looks it over suspiciously. “It’s just plastic. And cardboard.”

“Well yeah, it’s from the dollar store.” Sokka reassumes his position laying across Zuko’s bed.

“There aren’t even any instructions.”

Sokka takes the checkers and rips open the plastic, dumping the pieces over Zuko’s bed. “You don’t need instructions for checkers. Everyone knows how to play checkers. It’s like rock paper scissors. Everyone just knows.”

“How is it like rock paper scissors? The instructions are literally in the name.” Sokka shrugs and starts setting up the board as Zuko flusters on. “How did you learn how to play then if you didn’t need instructions?”

“I don’t know. I just remember playing it. Why? Did _you_ need the instructions?”

Zuko looks away and doesn’t answer, instead pointing to where Sokka is setting up red pieces in front of him. “Why are you setting it up? I thought checkers was boring.”

“Not as boring as talking about the lost instructions for checkers, though.”

“I’m not playing. I never said I’d play.”

That’s what stops Sokka from arranging the cheap plastic pieces on the cheap cardboard. He pouts. “Why not?”

“I don’t play checkers.” Zuko honest-to-god crosses his arms over his chest, his face going red again. _Who gave him the right to look so cute without even trying?_ Sokka is quickly losing this pouting war. He changes tactics.

“Oh, so dollar store checkers are below an ex rich-boy? What, are you strictly a chess guy, then?” 

Zuko rolls his eyes and tugs at the sleeve of his t-shirt as he answers with abrupt softness, “My mom taught us how to play my dad’s chess set, but that was it.”

The word ‘mom’ has Sokka backing down immediately. Zuko doesn’t like to talk about his mom much. Sokka knows what Zuko had explained when he asked to move in with Sokka, almost four months ago, but that’s about it. A bad divorce that resulted in Zuko being unable to see his mother for nearly seven years. Zuko’s uncle helps him look for her, but his father found out and kicked him out of the house. They still haven't found her.

“Dude chess is like, checkers on steroids. I’ll walk you through it.” Sokka finishes setting up Zuko’s red pieces and smiles his best smile at him. “Trust me; there aren’t that many rules to remember. Play with me?”

Zuko eases up slowly but surely, uncrossing his arms and turning to face Sokka properly. “Okay, who goes first?”

“I don’t remember. Rock paper scissors?”

Zuko laughs and extends his fist to begin counting to three, but it takes all of Sokka’s concentration to participate instead of just staring blankly at Zuko’s smile… _His lips_ …

Zuko wins with paper, and so he gets to start.

Sokka coaches him through the basics of how pieces move and how they can steal other pieces. Zuko seems to catch on very well, but they hit a snag when Sokka reaches Zuko’s side of the board and turns his piece into a king that can move however it wants.

“You just made that up!”

“I did not! Look it up. I bet you all my pieces that I didn’t make it up.”

Zuko narrows his eyes in frustration at the board but he’s still smiling just a bit, and it honestly has Sokka a little more breathless than a game of checkers should make him.

Two minutes later, Zuko has four kings and all of Sokka’s pieces. Sokka never even got more than the one king. To be fair to himself, though, most of the game involved Sokka pointing out potential moves for Zuko to make sure he knew what to look for and got the hang of things. Sokka is just too good for even himself to win against.

“How did you lose at a game you had to teach me?” Sokka’s still trying to figure that out himself. Zuko starts setting the board back up.

“You want to play again?” Sokka asks as he obligingly hands over his few captured red pieces.

“Got anything better to do?”

Something better than watching Zuko laugh and smile and fight with him about the rules of a dollar store game? No such thing.

And so they play again, and Zuko rides the giddiness of being better than Sokka at a game he knows nothing about, so if Sokka maybe overlooks a few places where he totally could have stolen Zuko's pieces during the second game, no one can blame him.

“Who knew you’d end up losing to an amateur twice in a row.” Zuko’s setting up the game again, and his smile has turned more taunting than victorious.

“Hey, at least I know how to use an iron. Hope you know how to clean that thing off before you give it back to your uncle tomorrow.”

Zuko shrugs, now unbothered by his ironing capabilities. Sokka should never have helped him in the first game. “I ordered him another one. It’ll be fine. Again?”

This time Sokka resolutely keeps his eyes on the board and manages to destroy Zuko. Newly humbled, Zuko lays back on his bed instead of setting the board back up, and the remaining black pieces slide away from their positions with the movement. Sokka lays back as well, thinking maybe he’ll indulge in a nap too. Checkers turned out to not be so boring after all, so he might as well.

Zuko’s only been living with Sokka for a few months, and it was only meant to be temporary at first, but now…

Well, he hasn’t left yet, so that's something. Sokka had pushed his things to one side of the room and gave Zuko free reign over the other half, but he still hasn’t done anything more than move in his bed and an old nightstand that Suki gave him. Of course, he has all of his stuff, bags of clothes, and two boxes of books and various junk, but everything stays in the bags and the boxes.

Sometimes Sokka entertains the idea of unpacking everything himself. He’ll just stuff all of Zuko's clothes into his closet. He’ll put all of the books onto his bookcase in the living room, which currently mainly houses his Funko Pop collection. He’ll move all of Zuko’s toiletries into the bathroom right next to his own bottles of shampoo and body wash. He’ll move Zuko’s bed right out into the alley and just move the boy himself right into Sokka’s own bed, which may or may not be big enough for two, but that’s more of an encouragement than a deterrent.

Maybe if they do this more often Zuko will choose to stay. Maybe Sokka should invest in more board games.

“What am I going to do?” Zuko asks it so quietly that for a second, Sokka thought it was in his head, but then Zuko sits back up and hunches over with his head in his hands.

“About what?”

It takes a long time for Zuko to answer, so by the time he says “Everything,” Sokka already has a million answers for him on the tip of his tongue.

“You’ll learn how to use an iron and kick butt at your interview tomorrow. Probably not in that order.” Zuko doesn’t stir from his spot at the edge of the bed, so Sokka sits up next to him. “You’ll get the job and the loan. You’ll enroll in classes with me tomorrow and let me talk you into taking a kickboxing class with me or something.”

Zuko does lift his head a bit at that. All Sokka can see is one amber eye, but he can tell that Zuko is smiling from the way it shines.

Sokka feels brave. “You’ll let me help you unpack. You’ll stay.”

Zuko looks at his bags of clothes on the floor and doesn’t say anything. Sokka feels less brave.

“You’ll let me keep beating your ego down in checkers.”

Zuko snorts a small laugh and turns to look at Sokka, fully this time, and all the bravery has left Sokka.

“You only won once.”

“Well, technically, I won twice since I helped you win the first time. You wouldn’t have won if it wasn’t for me, so I think I deserve the credit for that.” 

Zuko throws his arms in the air and laughs. “No! I beat you fair and square.”

Sokka is laughing too, staring a bit too openly at Zuko than is necessary this close to him. “Last time I checked, ‘fair’ didn’t cover having someone else help you.”

“You’re just a sore loser.”

“You’re a sore winner!”

“A sore winner isn’t even a thing!” Zuko starts to stand, but something demonic possesses Sokka’s hands because they grab onto Zuko’s before he can entirely turn away. Or at least that’s what he plans on telling Zuko just happened when he sits back down and looks at Sokka like he just swallowed a calculator.

But then he can’t speak at all because holy shit were they sitting this close before? Did Sokka just pull Zuko closer? Why is his body trying to be smooth when his brain has no chance of keeping up? Zuko is his best friend, why is he so awkward about this? Like _hey man I've had a crush on you since like we met and I kind of get the feeling you might like me too but if not don't worry it only took that crush on Suki a year to go away so I'm sure this will be over soon but if you stopped looking at me altogether that would probably speed things along okay great thanks._

“Sokka…?” Zuko sounds very concerned, and it’s all Sokka can do not to run away. But he realizes he has to say something and Zuko hasn't pulled his hands away yet so— 

“Stay,” he whispers. Zuko’s eyes widen. “With me.”

Zuko tightens his fingers around Sokka's. “I don’t want to stay too long and be a bother—” Zuko starts, and it’s the exact same thing he told Sokka when he’d asked for a place to stay. Sokka just can’t take it anymore. His chest might burst if Zuko says one more word.

So Sokka stops him with a kiss.

It’s the quickest kiss of Sokka’s life, barely a peck, but it stops Zuko in his tracks. His eyes are closed tight.

“ _Stay_ ,” Sokka says again, vowing to be embarrassed about the hint of desperation in his voice later. Was his heart beating this loudly the entire time? Can Zuko feel it in their hands?

Zuko opens his eyes slowly and grabs the sides of Sokka’s face, kissing him again in answer.

If Sokka has it his way, tomorrow he won't be nearly as bored.

**Author's Note:**

> Small and dumb but dammit I had to get it out of my head


End file.
